1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to a refrigerated display cabinet for humidifying and refrigerating a storage chamber by mixing a mist from a humidifier unit into a forcibly circulating flow of cooled air.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 55-46383 discloses a humidifier unit for supplying a mist generated by ultrasonic vibrators into a cooled air passage in a refrigerated display cabinet to prevent fresh produce articles displayed in the cabinet from being dried and hence keep them fresh. With the conventional construction, the humidifier with the ultrasonic vibrators is placed on an upper front end of a partition plate which defines the cooled air passage inwardly of heat insulating wall, and the mist generated by the humidifier unit is supplied through a distributor into the cooled air passage upstream of a cooled air outlet thereof. The prior humidifier unit construction has suffered from the following disadvantages:
(1) Since the humidifier unit is disposed in the produce storage chamber in the refrigerated display cabinet, water in an atomizing water tank and water supplied through a water supply pipe to the atomizing water tank are cooled, and will not be atomized at a high rate (a larger quantity of mist can be generated by the ultrasonic vibrators when the temperature of water to be atomized is higher).
(2) The water in the atomizing water tank and the water supply pipe is liable to get frozen when the operation of the humidifier unit is stopped. Therefore, it is necessary to mount electric heaters on outer peripheral surfaces of the atomizing water tank and the water supply pipe, with the result that the humidifier unit is complex in structure.
(3) As the atomizing water tank and the water supply pipe are positioned in the produce storage chamber, they are visible and the display cabinet has a poor appearance.
(4) With the water supply pipe and the distributor located in the cooled water passage, part of the generated mist will be turned into water droplets before it reaches the outlet due to a viscosity resistance by the wall surfaces of the distributor and the cooled air passage. This lowers the humidifying capability.